TITANE (Julia Ducournau - 2021)steemCreated with Sketch.

in #cinema2 years ago (edited)

Honestly, I wouldn't have gone to see Titane, if it was not for a friend. It had been a long time we had not seen each other and a movie was overdue. However, Titane was the only one which truly matched our common agendas, and so here we go... Let's see 2021's Palme D'Or.

1h47 later, I can say that TITANE has slightly surpassed my (low) expectations.

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The reasons why I was so lukewarm towards it are not rational, and have more to do with the hype surrounding it. I'm always suspicious about violent and gore movies made by female directors, as if this was the only way female directors feel they can compete with the big boys or to attract attention from the media. Second, this movie comes from my own country, and I knew... I simply knew something, anything (dialogs, sets, actors) would make me cringe.

It's quite difficult to sum up the story without revealing too much, but I'll try as succinctly as possible. Alexia is an exotic dancer which specalizes in cars events and such. Due to an accident in her childhood, she has had heavy surgery on her skull, now covered with a blade of titane to protect it, leaving a Cronenberg-esque scar behind her right ear. This fusion of metal in her bone and flesh makes her particularly sensitive and attractive to cars. However, she can't escape being a woman, and, as such, constantly threatened by creepy needy males, which causes her to become a killer... When her killing spree becomes too much to bear, she escapes and finds nothing better than to impersonate a missing person in order to disappear...

I'll say it now : there is something quite not convincing in the plan of Alexia to escape by impersonating someone else. It feels like there are two movies at some point. The first act splurges on the blood, vomit, violence with a committed glee, and then, suddenly, as soon as she has performed her disappearing act, it's like something else altogether is starting... Something more realistic, which is both more troubling and more touching than anything would expect. Alexia - the dancer on whom drooling males fantasize endlessly - is now a mute young man on whom the Father projects his loneliness and love in order to compensate for his loss of masculinity.

The scenes between both are a mixture of tenderness and awkwardness which are freshing after all the violence which preceded it, and it's quite interesting to see how both of them are slowly taming each other into some kind of a relationship, in spite of all their differences, and in spite of the dubious looks of people around them - a nice way to say that not everybody is as gullible as the Commandant Legrand. Julia Ducourneau has enough savvy not to put too much words and labels on this relationship, nor what it means, leaving us free to work out the details - or it may be her simple way to declare: take it or leave it.

However, the way the movie ends clearly tends towards an almost messianic/christian grand finale. From the first act, Alexia has been doomed with an almost apocalyptical countdown, which provides an effective subplot towards an inevitable conclusion. Alexia, for all her violence and all the metal in her, cannot escape her female condition and must yield to the call of nature in a very bloody and painful way, becoming a sort of vessel for a new kind of messiah - half machine, half human.

All in all, this is a very daring movie, which is constantly on the verge of falling into a parody of itself. It is aware of it, and sometimes looks straight at it and will make you smile, or laugh (or cringe). It does not work perfectly as a fantastical movie, nor as horror movie, but is as bullish as its heroin... Daring you to laugh at it or to dismiss it. The violent histrionics of the beginning are certainly not for everyone's taste, but - once surpassed - the patient spectator can enjoy a more thoughtful study of the feminine and the masculine than one could expect. Just don't expect a clear answer.

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I'm glad it surpassed your low expectations. Pretty much everything about it sounds terrible.

It's flawed, but it has some real balls. Which is more than one can say about many movies nowadays.

If it makes its way over here (in English or with subtitles), I'll have a look 🙂

Some films make wonder...
why I spent the time watching them
why would someone take the time to film them
what did the director want to tell us...
and this one might be one of those.
Now I'm curious, and if one day I get the opportunity, who knows ...

It will leave you with more questions than answers, but that's not a bad thing sometimes.

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